Complete Project Gutenberg John Galsworthy Works eBook

Smoking slowly, and looking just over the top of his
wife’s head, Malioring answered:

“I’ll have a try; and don’t you
worry!”

Lady Malloring turned away. Her soreness still
wanted salve.

“Those two young people,” she murmured,
“said some very unpleasant things to me.
The boy, I believe, might have some good in him, but
the girl is simply terrible.”

“H’m! I think just the reverse,
you know.”

“They’ll come to awful grief if they’re
not brought up sharp. They ought to be sent
to the colonies to learn reality.”

Malloring nodded.

“Come out, Mildred, and see how they’re
getting on with the new vinery.” And they
went out together through the French window.

The vinery was of their own designing, and of extraordinary
interest. In contemplation of its lofty glass
and aluminium-cased pipes the feeling of soreness
left her. It was very pleasant, standing with
Gerald, looking at what they had planned together;
there was a soothing sense of reality about that visit,
after the morning’s happening, with its disappointment,
its reminder of immorality and discontent, and of folk
ungrateful for what was done for their good.
And, squeezing her husband’s arm, she murmured:

“It’s really exactly what we thought it
would be, Gerald!”

CHAPTER XIII

About five o’clock of that same afternoon, Gerald
Malloring went to see Tod. An open-air man himself,
who often deplored the long hours he was compelled
to spend in the special atmosphere of the House of
Commons, he rather envied Tod his existence in this
cottage, crazed from age, and clothed with wistaria,
rambler roses, sweetbrier, honeysuckle, and Virginia
creeper. Freeland had, in his opinion, quite
a jolly life of it—­the poor fellow not
being able, of course, to help having a cranky wife
and children like that. He pondered, as he went
along, over a talk at Becket, when Stanley, still
under the influence of Felix’s outburst, had
uttered some rather queer sayings. For instance,
he had supposed that they (meaning, apparently, himself
and Malloring) were rather unable to put themselves
in the position of these Trysts and Gaunts. He
seemed to speak of them as one might speak generically
of Hodge, which had struck Malloring as singular,
it not being his habit to see anything in common between
an individual case, especially on his own estate, and
the ethics of a general proposition. The place
for general propositions was undoubtedly the House
of Commons, where they could be supported one way
or the other, out of blue books. He had little
use for them in private life, where innumerable things
such as human nature and all that came into play.
He had stared rather hard at his host when Stanley
had followed up that first remark with: “I’m
bound to say, I shouldn’t care to have to get
up at half past five, and go out without a bath!”